Monthly Archives: July 2006

“Unaffordable and Unsustainable: NASA’s Failing Earth-to-orbit Transportation Strategy”

The Space Frontier has released a White Paper highly critical of NASA’s strategy to service LEO.  In it they call for America to commit to using the private sector to service all LEO-destined crew and cargo services by 2010.

Though this report does not directly speak to building or using a Space Elevator, it certainly is relevant to it as most of us in the SE community believe that Private Enterprise is the way to go for space exploration and exploitation.  This study makes a solid case for getting NASA out of this role as quickly as possible.

(Bob Munck alert – the report is in pdf format)

“We Have Canadian Tire”

This is an article from the July 16th, 2006 Toronto Star, discussing the Punkworks team’s entry into this year’s 2010 Space Elevator competition (it’s in Word format – and you’ll have to Zoom in to be able to read it).

Money Quote from Punkworks team leader Allen Atamer: “We don’t have the money to pay for a $300 titanium screw that goes on the Shuttle.  We have Canadian tire.”

Space Diver Prepares For Big Jump

In an earlier post, I had discussed the idea of skydiving from space.  Michael Laine from LiftPort had commented about “a business proposal that is being worked up, with our balloon based lifter test platforms that carry people up to about 5 miles, and they can jump from there… it would be a wild ride, and it should be possible within 2-3 years.”

Here’s an article from Space.com about someone who wants to parachute / free-fall from an altitude of 25 miles.

I think I’ll just watch…

Scorpions for Cancer Therapy and Space Elevator Contests

The Boston Museum of Science produces a series of podcasts on various technical topics.  In the current week’s offering, the Space Elevator games coming up in October are described, along with a “Space Elevator 101” primer for the uninitiated.  Despite the technical errors in the presentation (geosynchronous orbit is defined as 27,000 Kilometers above the earth and all of the rest of their measurements are proportionally incorrect), it’s good to see yet another outlet talking about Space Elevators.

The presentation is linked to here and covers two topics.  You can skip the first topic if you like (Scorpions for Cancer Therapy – as a cancer survivor, I found it quite interesting); the Space Elevator Games section begins at 7 minutes, 42 seconds in and lasts for a little over 11 minutes.